Smithville Music Festival Site Chosen in Kentico Contest

The Smithville Music Festival Website which was developed by S7 Media Design and ported in to Kentico CMS for ASP.NET was named one of the 'Best Sites on Kentico CMS Free Version" by Kentico. As a reward for his efforts, Les Warren received a license for the Ultimate version of the Kentico CMS for the site. This will enable S7 to add further enhancements to the site and lend better marketing support to the Smithville Music Festival.
When the Festival was first conceived as an annual fundraiser for a project in Smithville, Les Warren volunteered his services to develop a web site to help market the Festival. With only 90 days to plan and market the festival a quality web prescence proved to be crucial.
Les Warren worked with other Festival volunteers and designed a logo for the Festival and then created a website design following input from the festival committee.
Once the website was launched Les and the Festival committee got busy on Social Media. A Facebook page and Twitter account were created and committee members started visiting local event sites to comment and submit listings. The hard work seems to have paid off - even though advance online sales were bleak, on the day of the show 1500 tickets were sold  to visitors from all over Central Texas. It is believed that the social media campaign and the website were crucial as there was no budget for advertising in other media.
The Festival was a first rate event, featuring headliner Jimmie Vaughan with rare guest perfomances by Hannibal Lokumbe and Lou Ann Barton. Eleven acts in total played the Festival making for a day filled with quality music and entertainment.
The Festival recieved some rave reviews in online blogs including Michael Corcoran's music blog in Austin 360. A pick of these reviews was quickly incorporated on the Festival website to begin promotion of next years Smithville Music Festival.
Looking forward to the 2010 Festival on November 6 the Festival committee and S7 have been busy adding to the website to promote the next show. Added was merchandising of T-shirts and posters on the site, and of course continual news updates on Festival developments. This is all facilitated by the sites being built on Kentico CMS.
Ticket sales will first be announced on Facebook and Twitter in advance of a general public announcement. The Smithville Music Festival currently has hundreds of fans on Facebook and this number is expected to grow as the next show draws nearer. With the new application license S7 Media Design hopes to develop a community portal around the Smithville Music Festival for fans of the festival and the performers playing there. S7 will also be looking for new and better ways to integrate social media with their marketing efforts.
Be sure to visit smithvillemusicfestival.org to see what all the hoopla is about and if you are a fan of music - to become connected to one of the premier musical events in Central Texas. VD3DQP9WN2XE